


Into a Bright Bound, Sea Surrounded Fury

by birdbulletarrow



Category: The Vegetarian
Genre: Body Horror, Closure, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mild Gore, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 07:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8195873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdbulletarrow/pseuds/birdbulletarrow
Summary: The reservoir of useless begging and angry rants from which In-hye had drawn and flung at her sister has dried up at last.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Purity Ring's "Saltkin." In keeping with the tone of the novel, this is brief but quite dark; proceed with caution.

> There was this photo of you, Mum, flying about in the wind. I was looking at the sky, okay, and there was a bird, and I heard it say, ‘I’m your mum.’ And these two hands came out of the bird’s body.  
>  (THE VEGETARIAN)  
> 

 

 

_I tasted lines of blood between my teeth, saw the white and crimson mess on the bench. Figures surrounded me. Among them, my husband. His face was contorted into a mask of disgust. His mouth was moving, but all I could hear was the mastication of flesh. Feathers clung to my tongue, as though it were sprouting._

 

 

The IV drip is hypnotic. In-hye has no idea how much time has passed; she’s been sitting in this room, by this bed her entire life, and she is exhausted. Dimly, she remembers Ji-woo. He is at the neighbors’. They’ll keep him, her fine-boned, sensitive son, fold him close to their responsible chests, and they will say, your mother has gone away forever. He’ll cry for a time, but he will adjust, as children do, as she and Yeong-hye did in their separate ways. 

Her sister’s emaciated hand looks like a stage prop. In-hye fixes her bleary gaze on it, and with as much gentleness as she can muster, slips her fingers beneath Yeong-hye’s; careful to exert no pressure, her palm a lukewarm cushion upon which her sister’s cool hand can rest.

In the wake of the winding ambulance ride that brought them down from Mount Ch'ukseong to this hospital wing in Seoul, the reservoir of useless begging and angry rants from which In-hye had drawn and flung at her sister during every visit to the psychiatric ward these last months has dried up at last. And the black wound left inside her when she had that tongue-shaped polyp removed has yawned open once again into a hot, palpable, hungry thing. 

Apologies are futile, In-hye knows, but the internal pressure builds to an unbearable level as the minutes tick by. She feels possessed. 

“Should we have gone into the forest together when we were kids and never come back?” she croaks out. Yeong-hye, nearly transparent against the bedsheets, does not answer.

The image of the black bird soaring high above the ambulance, then disappearing into the sun wells to the surface of In-hye's mind, vivid as the blood that sprung from the split in Yeong-hye’s wrist when she slashed it open in front of the entire family. In-hye’s eyes burn, but remain dry as dust. She presses her forehead against the mattress, careful not to brush even a fold of the hospital gown lest she inadvertently cause more pain.

“I never told you. I nearly went in, once, as an adult, but I didn’t go all the way in. I couldn’t. Ji-woo had a premonition that I would.” It’s hard to breathe, as though she'd swallowed the coil of electrical cord she had stuffed into her pocket that day. But In-hye continues. “It’s a monster made of flame and destruction, but I understand now: you can take what remains of your body with you.” 

Deep inside her gaping, black wound is a feeling like a hair caught in the throat, or is it the thread of a fibrous plant? The bird in Ji-woo's dream had sprouted human hands. That's me, she thinks, and remembers the swing of the ambulance on the mountain road, feels Yeong-hye arc up, and vanish into the blazing sky.

 

 


End file.
